Weeknight Chicken Lo Mein

Chinese takeout is my weakness, but it is also a budget-buster, especially as often as I would like to indulge in it. Today’s recipe is an easy Weeknight Chicken Lo Mein recipe that fills that takeout void beautifully.

I am working with Walmart and for this month’s grocery project they wanted me to share the good news that their rotisserie chickens are now on rollback pricing at just $4.98, regularly $5.98 each.

You may not have noticed that they offer chickens over in the cooler of your store, in front of the Deli counters. When I discovered these, I started purchasing them weekly for our favorite Weeknight Chicken Noodle and Lemon Greek Chicken Soup. There are, of course, a million recipes you can create with these, but I thought this would be perfect for my Chicken Lo Mein fix this week and wanted to show you how I create this recipe at home.

I keep an arsenal of ingredients in our pantry and fridge for cooking our Asian dishes. You will find most of these items over in the Asian foods aisle of the store. Sesame Seed Oil, Rice Wine Vinegar, Reduced-Sodium Soy Sauce, and Oyster Sauce are all components to many of the sauces that I make in my dishes. I don’t go through fresh ginger very quickly so I love to keep a tube of this in our fridge for our dishes, like our favorite Mongolian Beef recipe!

The star of the show in this sauce is definitely the Oyster Sauce. It takes this sauce to the takeout level with just a tablespoon or two. Once you taste the sauce in this dish, I bet you will agree!

In my Chicken Broccoli Lo Mein recipe I simply use linguine noodles for the recipe. You can definitely do this if you want or you can head to your local Asian grocery store to get the real deal. The fresh noodles in the cooler are ideal, but since I make this recipe often, I keep the dried noodles in my pantry. This package has four pounds of noodles in it… or basically one serving.

If you are wanting to experiment with different types of Asian noodles, here is a handy Asian Noodles Cooking Timetable to help figure out how long to cook the noodles. My packaging didn’t have any instructions on it so I used this timetable as a reference for my noodles.

Other than the noodles, all the other ingredients can be found at your local Walmart including an Asian stir-fry blend of shitake mushrooms and even fortune cookies and egg rolls to add an element of fun to your meal.

In a separate small bowl, dissolve the cornstarch with some of this mixture and slowly add to the bulk of the mixture, stirring well. Set aside.

Cook the noodles according to package directions, drain and set aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil in a wok or large saucepan over medium heat. Add the ginger, garlic, mushrooms, any of your other favorite stir fry veggies, and green onions. Stir fry these for 30 seconds.

Add the reserved sauce mixture and then the chicken. Simmer until the sauce begins to thicken, about 2 minutes. Add the reserved noodles and toss gently, coating everything well with the sauce.